> Larvadain, who is now 74, worries that young lawyers are less concerned with right and wrong than with chasing dollars. Although Patricia Parker’s lawsuit against Woodworth offered small hope of a big payday, Larvadain agreed to represent her. “Because I saw wrong had taken place. And I knew someone had to take a stand.”
I know a lot of young lawyers who'd love to take on a case like this one. But matching people who need help to lawyers who have the time and institutional resources to take on these projects pro bono isn't easy when you're talking about folks wronged in rural Louisiana.
Also, I think there's something of a hesitancy to for business law firms to add suing municipalities to their pro bono docket. Which is a shame--a few New Orleans firms building up a pipeline of pro bono suits against places like Woodsworth could do a lot of good.
EDIT: If you're interested in (potential) justice porn, it's worth following Fant v. City of Ferguson. The DOJ gave a lot of ammunition to plaintiffs' lawyers when it concluded that the city was systematically using fines and other police actions as revenue sources, particularly against poor black people. It's Woodsworth writ large. The complaint is here: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/02/08/us/ferguson-co.... The docket is available here on Justia: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/missouri/moedce/4:2015cv00.... With her opinion last month on reconsideration, the judge has effectively denied the city's motion to dismiss. Dispositive motions are due May of next year, so we'll likely see by then whether this is granted class status. If so, things will get interesting.
The title of the article could be confusing for non-lawyers, the woman was not fighting a traffic stop for 6 years (i.e. not a defendant in traffic court), she spent 6 years suing/proving that there was a violation of her Constitutional Rights (i.e. Plaintiff in a civil suit).
The traffic defense portion/aspect of the case is one of many reasons I have co-founded www.tickettitan.com . With proper representation at that level, this likely would never have escalated to 25 days in jail. That said rural Louisiana is not alone, Florida has many "speed trap cities" and in fact Waldo, Florida was so bad the Chief of police was suspended and then the entire police department was disbanded.
While Larvadain is referencing the Civil side, it is possible though difficult to obtain a pro bono lawyer, but I would have reasonable expectation most lawyers would accept this on contingency so there would be no out of pocket legal fees (hourly billable cases almost never make sense against the Gov. because of statutory caps on damages).
Yes she did fight the 4 tickets in traffic/mayor's court, but she lost. That did not take 6 years.
After losing she filed a civil lawsuit against the city and the officer, that is what took 6 years (including appeals) and that is where her monetary judgment came from. That was my point, it is confusing to non-lawyers, but generally they should be aware that defendant's do not win monetary judgments in traffic/criminal cases.
We've had this sort of problem in Missouri for some time. An interesting case was Macks Creek. [0] That link claims that the new law "limited" traffic ticket revenue. It didn't, actually, it just said that any revenue over the limit wouldn't stay with the municipality, but would be transferred to the local public school district. That got rid of Macks Creek! I suspect that if that law were expanded from traffic tickets to encompass court fees as well, it would do quite a bit to discourage the municipal courts in Ferguson and neighboring towns from victimizing the public as they have. Sadly, I also suspect that racism will prevent this obvious fix from ever being implemented, even though poor whites throughout the state are victimized in similar ways.
Maybe I'm overstating my case. From a governance perspective, St. Louis is kind of a mess anyway. The city-county split in 1877 [1] set the tone for the constant division and re-division the area has seen ever since. Every time some suburban nitwit gets pissed off about something, instead of trying to fix it directly through existing channels, he starts circulating a petition to set up some new barely-incorporated village or district or whatever. Since these entities are tiny, no one pays attention to them, so corruption is rampant. The long practice of locating limited-access highways so as to destroy less-favored neighborhoods is also pretty terrible.
Also, don't most people graduate law school up to their eyeballs in debt? They might not have much choice. At 74 Larvadain probably has more freedom in the cases he can take on.
Also, depending on when he attended (but based on no later than when he established his practice in 1972), his entire tuition would have cost about a month's income for the average American household, inflation adjusted. Today it's about a year's.
You can tell you're in some kind of Silicon Valley echo chamber when people start calling every new ongoing businesslike concern a "startup", even if it departs radically from the model of "build something, attract investors to pay for building more, grow and eventually make lots of money".
We have other vocabulary terms like "business" and "firm" (e.g. a law firm) and "nonprofit" and "charity"; I suspect that one of them would probably describe what you have in mind better.
There are plenty of non-profits who do this. I work with one on my pro bono case. They partner with my firm and they've been helpful at giving me advice to help my client.
My buddy at the ACLU work with firms in the same type of arrangement.
The real problem is that a traffic stop isn't worth litigating.
Right and wrong is also a subject of opinion. Even the story in the OP is based on some real lawbreaking. We might all agree that these traffic stops go way to far, but they often do start with legitimate infractions (no insurance etc). Perhaps the better answer is to change these petty laws, or amalgamate them into something less difficult to obey. Frankly, the american approach of license+registration+insurance on three separate plans with three separate expiry dates is a minefield.
The story in the OP did start with a legitimate infraction, but on the part of the police officer, not the driver. The law is pretty clear that you can't just pull someone over for no reason and require them to produce documents. Right and wrong is pretty clear in this particular case, and it's insane that it took so long to get justice.
There's a useful debate to be had over the usefulness of the many traffic regulations we're required to follow, but it's hard to have that debate here, when the entire event started with an illegal stop by an officer, and none of the rest would have happened without that.
"We might all agree that these traffic stops go way to far, but they often do start with legitimate infractions (no insurance etc)."
Umm... Did you read the story? The original stop was illegal to begin with (that is, the cop was doing an illegal activity). Then the driver in question had all her papers in order (which she proved to the Mayor/Judge with documentation). But the fine was not just not dropped... they arrested her for not paying that unjust fine and threw her in prison for 25 days.
Lawyers can argue about the stop, but it happened. They happen all the time. The cop might not have had probable cause, he stopped the car for no better reason than he wanted to, but that isn't the cause of all the difficulties. It hit the fan when the cop starts running the paperwork.
"When Godwin ran Parker’s license, the computer said it was suspended. He also said the registration card was expired."
That's the root problem, not the stop. There was, from the cops perspective, a real infraction here. So rather than debate the constitutionality of the stop, we should address the overly-complex system that resulted in this perceived infraction. If the computer was wrong, fix the machine. If the paperwork was actually expired, why are they still using paper? If we don't want cops issuing onerous citations for these things, change the laws so they cannot. We should not patch over bad laws by simply not enforcing them.
In many jurisdictions (ie mine) the entire stop would have been perfectly legal. We display out registration/insurance details on a license plates. So cops are perfectly justified in pulling cars over with expired registration/insurance/plates. They need not speculate. They cannot claim suspicion or the need to check paperwork when the plate shows validity. And and driver stepping into a car can see on the plate whether everything is correct. Every cop should be able to lookup a plate and check all the paperwork prior to pulling anyone over.
"Lawyers can argue about the stop, but it happened"
Lawyers have argued about the stop and the verdict has been reached and upheld on appeal. The rest of your arguments are just as ignorant of the actual case.
"There was, from the cops perspective, a real infraction here"
No there wasn't. The cop himself said so.
"officer hit his lights and pulled her over. The officer, David Godwin, later testified that he stopped the pickup “just to check and see” and to “find out what was going on.”
Once again, please read the OP and for the love of god, stop spewing ignorant opinion.
No, the root problem is that a police officer decided to unconstitutionally stop a car with 3 African Americans, because they had committed the crime of being African American.
This discussion of the root problem is useful, but let's not let it become a red herring or distraction from the rest of the problem: I mean even if the stop happened and was legal, there is a real and valid problem in the way the trial occured, once she presented the proof of valid license and insurance, that should have been the end of it - including a reimbursement for expenses incurred.
I am curious about racial motivations and racial disparity though. It might be reasonable to think that the cop didn't pull over the people due to their race, as it was dark and I don't know if there was any way he could have seen that well. I wonder though if there is a way to find out a stops vs "run the license" ratio and if it indicates any racial biases. The run the license part should be gleanable from logs, but the number of stops part may be difficult - I don't know how those are recorded and how accurately they are recorded.
From the article (and the actual judgement the article links to)
> Absent a traffic violation, so far as can be gleaned from this record, the only visible attribute of Parker and her passengers that might have distinguished them from other motorists turning on Methodist Parkway was they are all African Americans. There simply is no other distinguishing thing that can be surmised.
What good would it do to change the law around the cop issuing the citation when you've already demonstrated that you don't care if the cop follows the law in the first place by allowing illegal stops?
>...young lawyers are less concerned with right and wrong than with chasing dollars...
Based, of course, on the corrupt system created and sustained and protected by the old lawyers who can't see far enough past their own biases to realize that they are the same horrible people.
Ultimately it's the citizens that are to blame. It's elected police chiefs or sheriffs, elected mayors, and (usually) elected judges that create and perpetuate these systems.
I mean, look at Woodsworth. There's no lobbyists, SuperPAC funding, Koch Brothers money. There's no excuses. The people could vote every wrongdoer in this story out of office tomorrow. They choose not to.
This is the key to running cities based on ticket revenue. Residents would would never tolerate it if they were plundered like this. Heck, most of them probably don't realize what's going on until they've been there awhile.
There's a 25 MPH speed trap near me (no schools or anything nearby) that uses photo enforcement instead of actual police officers. It's basically an ATM for the tiny village of 179 residents. In 2013, they stopped 26 people for going too slow. Yes, too slow.
In Pennsylvania, more than half of the fees on tickets I have seen go directly to charity or similar (government) funds, if I remember correctly. This is the right strategy.
I don't have the information on traffic fees, but there's strong evidence that lottery fees are supposed to go to charity but get put in general state funds instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PK-netuhHA
You could say the same thing about alcohol & vice taxes.
It might make more sense than I realize, but destroying punitive damages seems like a terrible option. Damages are meant to penalize the offender; destroying wealth penalizes everyone.
So how do you remove the conflict of interest? They have every incentive to abuse these revenue (more like theft) streams and become dependent on them.
Give or take demerit points, in my area of the world there are 9 points and when gone you no longer have a driver's license. It's for severe infractions such as DUI, reckless driving, excessive speed.
Although for a speeding ticket one point is harsh maybe 1/2 point or 1/4 point if less than 30km/h over the posted speed with a 10km/h grace (speedometer error/wind etc.).
No monetary gain or loss for either side no incentive to catch speeders going a little bit over the limit and a big incentive as a driver to not get caught.
My area of the world (Utah, USA) also has a licensing point system. Accrue enough points and your license gets suspended.
Problem is, like my wife a decade ago when she tried to get her license renewed, it had been revoked a year prior to that because of excessive speeding tickets and due to her being young and moving a lot managed to not receive the postal notification (or she ignored it, you can choose). What do you do when people just start ignoring the points? Have more points that accrue on subsequent violations that further prevent someone from renewing their license after a probationary period? What if they ignore that point system also?
The executors of the Justice system of the United States relies almost entirely on trust. It's trivial to break trust.
Up here in BC, we have a points system for traffic violations. A typical speeding-just-a-bit ticket would earn you 3 points. But 3 points get removed from your balance every year, so it's like being able to have one 'free' speeding ticket per year. When your points exceed 3 points your insurance rates go up and if I remember right there is a threshold at which you can no longer purchase insurance. So the points are a pretty good enforcement system for most people. Of course it still won't stop the people willing to drive without insurance or a valid license, but that's a different (smaller) category of offenders :).
"Send it far, far away" might be enough. It was only after local police departments started getting a cut of civil asset forfeitures (they used to be sent to the FBI, I believe) that counties started abusing it.
There are surely other options too, such as spreading it out. You could fund a flat tax credit for all residents of the county with the fines. The wealth is not destroyed, and if the credit is on the order of a handful of dollars per resident, no one is going to have any strong incentives. You could vote to double all traffic fines- but if you personally stand to gain $3.72 from that doubling, the incentive exists but is very small.
You could remove all perverse incentives by putting all fines, fees, etc into a state fund that is paid back annually to citizens via a rebate of some sort.
All funding of government would come only from taxes. This would eliminate any financial benefit to the government from fines, fees, and asset forfeiture.
Then the state will get used to having a certain volume of such funds, and the departments that provide a substantial fraction of those funds will tend to get looked on favorably...that doesn't end well, either.
Fines should go directly to a federally recognized not-for-profit. This is how repaying the community for a fine-able offence could be made. Also they should be /on top of/ damages. (In the case of most non-accident traffic matters, the 'damages' are non-existent.)
Nope. The Clinton Foundation is a "Federally Recognized not-for-profit." Could you imagine the stratospheric levels of corruption of non profits start to demand law enforcement revenues.
The money should go to the general revenue fund but as an offset against tax income. More fines: lower taxes (which essentially means that the fines are distributed to the taxpayers, which is completely fair since the crime is against "the people."
Law enforcement should never get fine money. That's a huge conflict of interest. It would be like a foreign government donating to the non profit of a sitting Secretary of State.
There actually is a system like this in place in Germany. Not for traffic fines, but if you get a fine in criminal court (technically your case is suspended conditionally on paying X€) it will go to a local charity.
Caused quite a bit of drama a few months ago when the "Kinderschutzbund" refused the payment in a widely publicized child pornography case (the defendant was a member of the federal parliament at the time of the crime) despite accepting it before in similar cases.
Then the state will start profiteering, as they do where I live. Here the government decided to just double the speeding fines, and they still pretend they do it for "traffic safety". It's a farce.
US is turning into the India that I came here to avoid. Policemen in India will stop you at their whim and find a reason to fine you (exact a bribe really).
A cop followed my car in Salt lake city for 10 miles before he stopped me for turning on my blinkers for only 2 seconds before changing lanes. Apparently the law in Utah says that it should be 3 seconds. I wish I had recorded that incident, simply because it is so unbelievable.
The incident smelled racist, and made sure I will never live in Utah / Salt Lake City.
“Godwin’s testimony shows a complete lack of knowledge of the restraints imposed upon police conduct by the U.S. Constitution and the laws and Constitution of the State of Louisiana.”
This. The 4th amendment protects against seizure (which a police stop constitutes) without reasonable suspicion of a crime. The problem is, unless you are fined, as the woman was in this case, and then appeal, what recourse do you have?
Is there some way to seek damages for the violation of your constitutional rights? (even if the inconvenience is minor) It seems like this problem would go away if the police department and city had to pay for their violations of the constitution instead of just forfeiting potential money from fines.
There are "stops" all the time without suspicion of a crime. As a passenger, I went through a sobriety check point last week, where the police officer asked for ID, and then asked the driver if he had been drinking. Every car that passed through that part of town during that hour or so did the same.
The key there is that every car that passed through that part of town during that hour or so did the same.
You can set up checkpoints as per Federal law (though your state may vary--some states have provisions against it, in which case your recourse is to state, not Federal law). However, these checkpoints must be indiscriminate: they have to stop everybody that passes them while they're active.
A cop cannot just pull a single car over to see what's going on. He has to have reason.
True, but I believe such stops have to be for every car passing through a checkpoint or some other non-discriminatory 'random' way (every 4th car, for example).
The stop in question here was clearly unconstitutional, as the appellate court held in their decision for the defendant. Other non-DUI style checkpoint stops without reasonable suspicion of a crime would similarly be unconstitutional.
Can you sue someone simply for the violation of your constitutional rights? In this case, the defendant had to pay fines, was a victim of false arrest, spent 25 days in jail and changed jobs to avoid driving through the town.
What I'm asking is, if you hadn't suffered such injustices, and had just been pulled over and let go without a fine or charges, would you still have grounds to sue the city simply over the violation of your constitutional rights? (that is, just for the unlawful seizure under the 4th amendment) How much damages would be appropriate in such a situation?
You have to be able to show you've suffered an injury (in the legal sense) that gives you standing to sue. Just getting pulled over and let go might count as such an injury, but how much can you reasonably expect in compensatory damages? It's not worth the time and money.
Yeah, perhaps a better solution might be to have the federal or state government impose fines on local city governments for incidents where citizens' constitutional rights are infringed. I'm not as interested in personal compensation for the injury as I am making sure that cities and police can't violate citizen's rights without consequences that ensure that the activity isn't repeated.
The fact that this city was collecting 61% of their annual revenue through regular police stops (many of which seem to be unconstitutional) is alarming. There has to be a better solution than to just appeal or sue for compensatory damages, which in most cases, will have little to no affect on the city. Even the $30K damages in this case seems small compared to the more than $1 million they collected in 2006 alone.
It seems like they should be subject to substantial fines, if not jail time for the officers or judges that are involved in these stops and cases. It just seems wrong that a city can arrest and jail someone for almost a month for not paying a $1,580 fine, but no one in the city government gets jail time for violating the constitutional rights of thousands of citizens, while making millions from their disregard of the law.
Yeah, that got to me. I spent a good few minutes wondering whether I'd physically assault a police officer who was preventing my wife from getting to the hospital.
Pretty sure in that situation I would just not pull over, and continue to the hospital. I'm sure there would be consequences to that (for me), but a bunch of emergency room personnel ushering a woman in labor into the hospital would hopefully override anything a cop was trying to do to keep her out.
I wonder if it would be useful to call 911 in that situation. Even though the authorities are involved, getting some more people aware of what's going on might put a stop to the nonsense.
Realistically the correct course of action is to call the non-emergency dispatch or call 911 and immediately inform them that this is not an emergency and to inform them the situation.
"An officer has turned on his lights and siren on Highway #101 but I am <continuing to the hospital>/<driving to a public/lit/safe location>."
Dispatch should contact the officer, relay information and they can return the details to you. Whether or not the police take offense and make your life hell is another story.
Many, many people do stupid things they'll regret when they're angry. This isn't "internet badass" bluster, it's a simple assessment of your own likely reactions.
It's been more than ten years since I've been provoked to physical violence, but I do worry about being caught in certain situations.
Read the judges findings from the appeal. The article did not even mention the purported signed confession:
"Ms. Parker admitted that she made the initials “PP” but stated that none of the other handwriting was hers. She also indicated that none of the other handwriting was on the document, including Ms. Gunter’s signature, when she filled in the initials “PP.”"
Woodsworth went so far as to commit fraud in order to take money from Parker.
I used to live near a town like this. Thornton, Illinois is the site of a giant limestone quarry and there's one major road you can drive on to get around the quarry if you don't want to get on the expressway (which is a bit out of the way depending on where you're coming from). These streets have 25 or 30mph signs, yet are wide and underutilized enough to easily be 35-45mph streets. Drivers unfamiliar with the area would be taken off-guard by these slow speed zones as they enter from neighboring towns. The police there pull people over for 2 or 3 mph over regularly.
According to IDOT, there were 2,334 traffic stops in Thornton in 2014. This town's population? About 2,300. That's one stop per man, woman, and child in this town! This is naked profiteering and pretty much all small towns in strategic areas turn into police-led profit centers. The real question is why isn't anyone stopping this?
It would be nice if gps apps (Google, Waze, Apple Maps, etc) would start showing this on their maps, and effectively treating them as a toll road. All the needed data is publicly available: town population, number of tickets, percentage of town revenue coming from fines, etc.
If the law isn't going to require signage for speed traps, the software can.
Waze would inform you, (assuming enough nearby users) but not in any special way. You'd just see a cop ahead.
By the way, if you aren't using Waze on trips of any significant length, I highly recommend it. It's good for more than just cop-spotting. You'll also know when a semi loses a tire in the road.
Hammonton, NJ is one of these, I believe. Along with some other towns along the White Horse Pike in the middle of South Jersey. You cruise along the pike at 55, because the limit is 50, and then you hit Hammonton, where the speed limit drops to 35 with no visible cues, just one speed limit sign that is often obscured by foliage. And there are always police patrolling this tiny stretch of road, or parked alongside with speed guns. And of course, they are happy to allow you to use the NJ statute that lets you plea to a no points charge of 'unsafe driving' instead of speeding, with a much higher fine.
I'd love to see a financial report on this town, and ones like it in NJ. Likewise, I expect Atlantic City and a couple of towns around it have a similar relationship with minor drug charges.
Hammonton native here (small world, Hi!); I've driven on those roads for a few years.
Even to those who have driven on these roads all our lives it gets confusing, though I do understand that if a road passes by all the major ordinary shopping centers in a small town, it does warrant a lower speed limit. If you thought Rt. 30 is bad, try Central Ave (Rt. 542); that speed limit changes every 500 feet or so, and the police love pulling people over there.
FL Route 301 is such a popular speed trap it is even mentioned on the wiki page.
Since US 301 is a popular short cut between Northeastern Florida and the Gulf Coast region, a number of towns along the road have been notorious speed traps. The speed limit drops from 65 mph to 30 mph in a matter of a few hundred feet. Many have accused the police in Waldo, Starke, Lawtey, and others of giving tickets simply to raise money.[3][4] The American Automobile Association has strongly advised motorists to avoid this stretch of the road.[5]
I thought of 301 when reading this article. I think there was a billboard stating "Speed Trap Ahead" outside... Starke? Can't remember now. There's no other remotely direct route to my grandmother's place though, so down 301 I go when I visit.
Wow - that's a much more interesting article than the title would imply. I wonder if anything changed in Woodworth in response to the verdict (I doubt that it did, but still).
The article seemed to try to indicate that Parker's (outragrous) treatment was indicative of a more systemic problem, but I didn't think the argument held up very well.
So Woodworth collects a lot of revenue by enforcing the speed limits. Good for them. What is the connection to Parker's case? Is it just the implication that the town is too focussed on revenue-raising? That's pretty weak.
As is the implication of racism, really. This one incident seemed arbitrary, not targeted. Again, without evidence of a wider pattern this just seems like one (egregiously) bad case of motivated reasoning in a town that (charitably put) seems generally to be interested in upholding the law to the letter.
This is an issue that people are only recently getting a grip on. In isolation all these cases seem arbitrary and not targeted. And, absent any overt action, it can seem difficult to ascribe racism. Additionally the court system has made it very difficult to use "statistical" evidence in individual cases.
But, when one steps back and look at the statistics, an overwhelming number of practices by law enforcement are disproportionately applied to people of color. This includes "fishing trip" stops, "consent" pretext searches, as well as unequal application in the court system (bail practices, pressuring to plead guilty by "overcharging", and more).
> On Feb. 18, she provided the documentation. Her license had, indeed, been valid. But the mayor didn’t drop the two license-related charges. Instead, he “asked her how much money she had with her,” an appeals court wrote. “She responded she only had about $300. The Mayor informed her she could at least pay the unlawful use of a driver’s license charge that day.”
> So she did, paying $215.
> But despite what she paid, despite the documentation she showed, despite the registration count having earlier been dismissed, she was presented this same day with a bill of information, saying Woodworth was charging her with all four counts originally written up by the officer. She was given until March 18 to pay whatever money was still owed.
Uh... what? I didn't expect the shakedown to be quite that blatant.
it is completely unlawful to require non-commercial travellers on public roads to have licenses, insurance, inspections, and registrations, let alone subject them to stops, arrests and tickets or fines when no crime has been committed. unless actual or imminent destruction of property, or violation of anothers' rights has occurred, there is no valid cause of action. no right for a stop. traveling on public roads is not a privilege granted by the government [1].
it's already been adjudicated, by the supreme court, and state supreme courts, many times [2]. it seems, however, that the irrational fear of chaos and harm that might result from people travelling without government licensing and regulation is enough to keep these absurd and sometimes incredibly harmful and costly situations going for the foreseeable future.
ask yourself; would you spend tens of thousands on a vehicle only to crash it into others' property, or use it to intentionally murder or otherwise harm others? no? have you ever met anyone who would? if yes, would having or not having a license in their wallet stop such a person? i don't think so.
police should only be involved when actual crimes occur or are potentially about to occur. see a vehicle hit a mailbox, get in a wreck, with a leaky exhaust disturbing the peace, or someone driving recklessly endangering others, etc. then you can call 911.
search "Driver Licensing vs. Right to Travel", for a fuller list of relevant case law.
[1] "Personal liberty largely consists of the Right of locomotion -- to go where and when one pleases -- only so far restrained as the Rights of others may make it necessary for the welfare of all other citizens. The Right of the Citizen to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon, by horse drawn carriage, wagon, or automobile, is not a mere privilege which may be permitted or prohibited at will, but the common Right which he has under his Right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Under this Constitutional guarantee one may, therefore, under normal conditions, travel at his inclination along the public highways or in public places, and while conducting himself in an orderly and decent manner, neither interfering with nor disturbing another's Rights, he will be protected, not only in his person, but in his safe conduct."
II Am.Jur. (1st) Constitutional Law, Sect.329, p.1135
[2] "The right to travel is part of the Liberty of which a citizen cannot deprived without due process of law under the Fifth Amendment. This Right was emerging as early as the Magna Carta."
Kent vs. Dulles, 357 US 116 (1958)
"The essential elements of due process of law are ... Notice and The Opportunity to defend."
Simon vs. Craft, 182 US 427
"Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule making or legislation which would abrogate them."
Miranda vs. Arizona, 384 US 436, 491
"Moreover, a distinction must be observed between the regulation of an activity which may be engaged in as a matter of right and one carried on by government sufferance of permission."
Davis vs. Massachusetts, 167 US 43;
Pachard vs. Banton, supra.
"... the only limitations found restricting the right of the state to condition the use of the public highways as a means of vehicular transportation for compensation are (1) that the state must not exact of those it permits to use the highways for hauling for gain that they surrender any of their inherent U.S. Constitutional Rights as a condition precedent to obtaining permission for such use ..."
Riley vs. Laeson, 142 So. 619;
Stephenson vs. Binford, supra.
"We find it intolerable that one Constitutional Right should have to be surrendered in order to assert another."
Simons vs. United States, 390 US 389
"... For while a Citizen has the Right to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon, that Right does not extend to the use of the highways, either in whole or in part, as a place for private gain. For the latter purpose, no person has a vested right to use the highways of the state, but is a privilege or a license which the legislature may grant or withhold at its discretion."
State vs. Johnson, 243 P. 1073;
Cummins vs. Homes, 155 P. 171;
Packard vs. Banton, 44 S.Ct. 256;
Hadfield vs. Lundin, 98 Wash 516
There are loads of general news stories or people being wronged that I would love to post here, but I resist because although interesting and relevant to people (as this article is) it isn't really tech news.
I feel that (much like yesterday's story on selling lead settlements) it's a very specific, interesting, and well written case of systematic wrongdoing that can provoke some interesting discussion. Just like how there's lots of math in the world, but every once in a while somebody posts a particularly interesting tidbit that makes it to #1 on HN.
I'd agree. Last time I argued against the droves of "health" stories being posted and the half-baked opinions people rabble about within them I was told it was "relevant" because health affects all hackers.
I respect that all things lifestyle can improve the lives of those in the tech community but I come here specifically for blogs/news/events relating to my field, I can get feelgood/ignorant opinions on any news site.
The guidelines say we're supposed to flag stories we don't like and then ignore them. Because a thread full of pointless comments, is valued more highly by those that run this place, than a flame war.
It was established that NONE of the citations were correct. She had a valid license, registration, and insurance at the time of the illegal stop. The second appeal makes this crystal clear. (http://caselaw.findlaw.com/la-court-of-appeal/1693755.html)
Nothing about the situation was valid. Not the stop, not the citations. There's a reason why she was willing to fight a traffic stop for 6 years, and why an attorney would take on such a penny-ante case: because it was pure injustice, top to bottom.
Perpetuating the notion that the victim had legitimate charges dismissed on the technicality of an illegal stop is wrong practically unto libelous. Don't do that.
By that reckoning, the police should be pulling everyone over and demanding that they show papers proving they're legally allowed to drive. After all, how do the police know that any driver has a license and registration?
No. The police officer had no reason to pull the driver over, and no reason to suspect she wasn't driving legally, so he should not have stopped her.
The stop was illegal, no question there. But the post I responded to said this:
> Perpetuating the notion that the victim had legitimate charges dismissed on the technicality of an illegal stop is wrong practically unto libelous. Don't do that.
I did miss that she had the documentation that her license is valid with her. (Though why did she need more time to prove that in court?) But the citation on the registration seems ok, but it should have been thrown out as soon as she provided the paperwork
For the license, it sounded like she had the paperwork to prove it was valid, but the officer refused to consider it. It sounds like the registration may have been the opposite case, where she had outdated paperwork but it would have been up to date in whatever system holds the data.
I missed the part about her having the paperwork to prove the license is valid. I may have been confused by the fact she asked the court for more time to prove she had a valid license.
She had documentation proving that her license had been reinstated. A record of the registration would be available on the officer's computer. And they shouldn't have been pulled over in the first place.
> She had documentation proving that her license had been reinstated.
It doesn't even matter that her license had at one point been revoked, may have currently been revoked, or might be revoked in the future. There was no legal basis for pulling her over, end of story.
Given that the original search was blatantly illegal, the original citations were not in fact reasonable.
Law Enforcement generally gets away with this behavior, in part, because the public only pays attention to the end result (in this case "no insurance") and pays no mind to the fact that a search was never justified in the first place.
Indeed. The officer pulled them over for no reason. This isn't even disputed. The officer admitted as much, apparently thinking this is something he's allowed to do.
The entire stop should have been voided instantaneously the moment it touched a court because of this.
If you want this to stop, presumably you need to step out of the middle age and allow actual automated speed cams as every other country does.
Now, there are two sides here. A matter of fact debtors prison for poor people and a vicious cycle where they keep accumulating more fines through inability of paying is a travesty of law.
But I can hardly sympathize with the discussion on speed traps, in a country where apparently 10mph over is considered a crass misuse of law (here, this nets you a month long driving ban) and tickets need to be written by officers, which naturally drastically limits enforcement, and driving on a suspended license is seen as a violation on the level of failure to use turn signals. Frankly, driving without a valid license should cause your car to be immediately and permanently impounded and any license only reissued on a retest after a ban. We can't get into a situation where having a valid license is more or less immaterial.
Are you writing from a place that has an efficient and reliable public transport network that runs around the clock?
If you are then I don't mind heavy enforcement of suspended licenses, but if you aren't when you clamp down on the "privilege" of driving a car you may also be destroying their ability to support themselves and their family. Having heavy punishments on a necessity like transport, without an adequate replacement, is hugely skewed against the poor. The rich can get someone else to drive or have their lawyer fight their license points, but the poor get disproportionately screwed.
Americans complaining about speed traps and red light cameras are a constant embarrassment to me.
I live in New York. This city should look like a less architecturally tasteful version of Amsterdam. Instead, it's infested with cars. We should have red light cameras at every intersection, zero-tolerance enforcement of speeding laws, congestion charging, etc., instead the subway is crumbling.
I've given up, I'm starting to learn Dutch... I want to live somewhere that actually cares about transportation.
Red light cameras are a real problem. Since tickets are incentivized, some of the more greedy agencies have shortened the yellow light timing, leading to more tickets and also more accidents.
I literally can't understand how some agencies can just go ahead and "shorten the yellow light timing". In EU the length of the yellow light is mandated by law and a small town in a middle of nowhere can do nothing to change it. There are a few exceptions - like in Portugal light changing from red directly to green, but no one anywhere has any power to change the length of the yellow light timing. It's mind boggling because EU consists of different countries which could very well make their own rules but decided to standardize them so all EU citizens can drive all over EU and expect the same rules everywhere. Yet US is a single country and can't have consistent driving rules??
I know a lot of young lawyers who'd love to take on a case like this one. But matching people who need help to lawyers who have the time and institutional resources to take on these projects pro bono isn't easy when you're talking about folks wronged in rural Louisiana.
Also, I think there's something of a hesitancy to for business law firms to add suing municipalities to their pro bono docket. Which is a shame--a few New Orleans firms building up a pipeline of pro bono suits against places like Woodsworth could do a lot of good.
EDIT: If you're interested in (potential) justice porn, it's worth following Fant v. City of Ferguson. The DOJ gave a lot of ammunition to plaintiffs' lawyers when it concluded that the city was systematically using fines and other police actions as revenue sources, particularly against poor black people. It's Woodsworth writ large. The complaint is here: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/02/08/us/ferguson-co.... The docket is available here on Justia: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/missouri/moedce/4:2015cv00.... With her opinion last month on reconsideration, the judge has effectively denied the city's motion to dismiss. Dispositive motions are due May of next year, so we'll likely see by then whether this is granted class status. If so, things will get interesting.